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It’s Past Time to Start Believing President Obama

President Obama’s recent State of the Union address was quickly dismissed by commentators on the right, and even many on the left, as “small bore” and a sign that just a year into his second term Obama is running out of steam.

We’re not so sure.

One of the major problems that establishment Republicans have in countering Obama’s agenda is that their first reaction to one of the President’s pronouncements is always something along the lines of “he can’t do that!”

So, when Obama goes ahead and does what Republicans just said he can’t do and they refuse, out of timidity or tacit agreement with the goal, to oppose the President in a constitutional fight to the finish, they are rightly perceived as weak and ineffective.

And that was exactly what we heard from the Republican establishment “leaders” after the State of the Union address.

A steady line of establishment Republican members of Congress traipsed in front of the TV cameras of FOX News to say “he can’t do that!”

But when he does do whatever he was threatening to do when he said “I have got a pen and I have got a phone, and I can use that pen to sign executive orders” what will be the Republican response?

Speaker of the House John Boehner’s response was “I would remind the president he also has a Constitution.”

That’s very true, and as Boehner seems to be implying, the Constitution’s separation of powers and checks and balances were framed to minimize the risk of the kind of arbitrary government that has been the hallmark of the Obama presidency.

But the Constitution has no utility if Congress refuses to use its powers to rein-in an overweening executive or becomes politically exhausted from constantly losing fights with the President.

Speaker Boehner’s admonition that “the president also has the Constitution” is only as useful as Boehner’s willingness to use the power the Constitution invests in Congress – especially the power of the purse – to rein-in Obama.

It is time the Republican “leaders” on Capitol Hill started believing Obama when he says he is going to act with or without constitutional authority and long past time they used the tools the Constitution gives them to stop him.